In the backyard of a Kreuzberg apartment block, Mira O’Briens studio-room is perched atop an exterior staircase. Large windows overlook a cheerful courtyard filled with the sounds of the neighbouring kita, letting in the sunlight and providing the prefect scenario for an artist who deals in reflections and refractions. Inside the studio, alongside large watercolours on paper, a number of precarious shards of glass lean against the walls.

“Glass Tree Site #3″ (2007-2008 in New Haven, CT); Photographs are the remaining documentation of this site-specific installation; dimensions are variable.

On one pane of clear glass, slim, undulating and interconnecting lines have been painted, casting a webbed reflection on the wall. My immediate thought is to see this as a completed work (Mira is known to use lights, shadows and real glass in her final installations), but soon find out that it’s a tool used in the creation of the large paintings on the adjacent wall. The eponymously titled series, Fractured Net (2011), are the result of an intense process of tracing (onto glass), reflecting (onto paper), shifting, re-positioning and repeating. The original object (an actual net) is figuratively shattered into a final fragmented composition. The resultant images are aesthetically pleasing, even decorative, while also being quite a frank document of process. Mira’s strength lies in being able to turn symbolic subject matters into literal processes and back again. Shapes resemble shards of glass, washed out colours hint at refracted light and so on.

“Fractured Net” (2011); ink and watercolor on paper; 196 x 275 cm

Mira’s background in Painting (Mira completed a Masters at Yale in 2008) is evident her approach. Being well-versed in traditional oil painting techniques still informs her experimentation with material and layering; yet her approach is unmistakably contemporary, as site, space and spectator are ever considerations in her installations. In the work Brittle Thicket (2010) at Vierter Stock Berlin, paintings appeared below glass on the floor of the gallery. Audience members were then invited to walk across the artwork, their steps creating star-like splinters across the smooth surface. I can imagine, how, as the glass crunched and crackled, the representation of a sprawling thicket underfoot would have been given both an audible and tactile dimension. At the same time, the original ‘thicket’ is also being slowly erased, mirrored, distorted and party concealed with each new pair of feet. Things went a step further in When Breaking a Current (2009). At the entrance to her glass walkway in the Berlin Volksbühne, visitors were given safety glasses and invited to join Mira in smashing the glass with a hammer. As with Brittle Thicket the audience-made web of radial cracks and fractures, add yet another layer of patterning, effectively completing (and obscuring) the artwork. The audience members are free to break the glass as they like, yet it will always within certain boundaries, restoring a kind of order to the composition.

“Brittle Thicket” (2010); at Vierter Stock, Berlin; Watercolor painting on paper, laminated glass; Performance and installation; 5x3m

“When Breaking a Current” (2009); at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg Platz, Berlin; Watercolor painting on paper, laminated glass; Performance and installation; 1.5x 6m; During the opening the audience was invited to participate with Mira in smashing the glass of the pathway.

At the visit, we discussed Mira’s interest in Victorian era optical devices. One find (at the British Art Centre at Yale), was the Claude Glass – a small convex darkly tinted mirror used as a viewfinder by landscape painters and landscape painting enthusiasts alike, imbuing everything with the glaze of a heavily graded 17th Century oil painting. Mira’s interest in the device stems from the notion that our Gaze is ever-mediated, and optical technologies, landscape and painting have long been bedfellows. In her series Glass Tree (2007-2008), tree branches were painted on broken, darkly tinted glass and placed at a number of sites. At some locations, shadows cast by real trees reflected in the glass, creating fleeting illusions. The work functions as both a receiver of information it then transforms (as in an optical device), and as a representation of that process (the painted branches mimic shadows). As with the works that would follow, the artwork shifts easily between the represented and the shadow of the real, the process of an artwork and its reflection in actualisation.

“Glass Tree Site #1″ (2007-2008 in New Haven, CT); Photographs are the remaining documentation of this site-specific installation; dimensions are variable.

Artist’s Statement:

“Shadows, reflections, traces and layers are materials of my work. The subtle areas of overlap between the organic and architectural, the structural and the entropic are themes. I am investigating different modes of perception and observation not only as visual activities; I am seeking to engage visceral and corporal experiences as well. The weight of one’s vision is felt in the entire body when walking across crackling, glittering broken glass. The violence in this gesture is countered by the delicate lace-like patterns formed between the cracks in the glass and the paintings underneath. As lines accumulate and patterns overtake, the form becomes decadent.”

___________________________________________________________________________________

Additional Information

Current and Upcoming Exhibitions / Projects:

CASTLE INN GALLERY
“Transregional Aesthetics” – MIRA O’BRIEN
Curated by Alan Ruiz
Exhibition: September 10 – November 4, 2011.
Delaware Water Gap, PA, USA

TAPE MODERN
Navigating Darkness – GROUP SHOW
Curated by Mira O’Brien & Helen Homan Wu (Opalnest).
Opening: November 4, 2011
Heidestrasse 14 (Click here for map)
Berlin, Germany

KUNSTHALLE AM HAMBURGER PLATZ
“Shelf Life” – GROUP SHOW
Curated by Nicole Cohen; Los Angeles Artists & Berlin Collective Group
Exhibition: April 25 – May 16, 2012
Opening Reception: April 25, 7-10pm
Gustav-Adolf-Str. 140 (Click here for map)
Berlin-Weissensee

See more of Mira O’Brien’s work:

miraobrien.com